omgwtfbbq #dontgo

Tom · Wednesday, Aug 6, 2008, 9:55 PM · Krehbiel Commentary

Virginia blogger Scott White has been spamming the Virginia blogosphere with breathless posts about the Twitter thread #dontgo for the last several days. It's being called a "movement," a "turning point," a "revolution," an "online orgy of oil drilling bliss" (okay, I made that one up).

Strangely, it is not being called a big entrepreneurial opportunity for some bloggers capitalizing on a staged publicity stunt by Republican lawmakers.

Ahem. Anyway, we're told we need to spread the word and head over to dontgomovement.com to join the legions of conservative Twitterers fighting back against those dirty, dirty Democrats who are deliberately trying to raise gas prices, destroy America and oppress the will of the people. (I might be paraphrasing their message a little bit.)

Turning away from the hype for a moment, here's what the movement is, distilled to its essense: It's a handful of opportunistic conservative new media marketeers (including Scott) co-opting the work of Republican Congressmen, starting up a web site and trying to convince you it's a conservative movement you need to be a part of. The new site is themed around what was a group of tweets from Republican Congressmen looking for publicity for the American Energy Act, but now has descended into a typical massive Internet chatroom -- a spewage of incoherence, self-promotion, noise, bickering, trolling, and, occasionally, a canned press release from one of the brave, brave Republicans remaining on the House floor fighting for the oil companies... err... businessmen with oil company stock... err... the Republican base... err... the American people.

Look for plenty of upcoming posts and media appearances from the #dontgo principles talking about how the #dontgo movement is not -- I repeat, not -- just a viral marketing campaign for a new web site for conservatives, but a real, substantive shift in the very nature of Washington politics, the new media, America, and the very foundations of the earth itself... and say, why not buy a T-shirt?

Cross-posted to http://krehbiel.blogspot.com/2008/08/omgwtfbbq-dontgo.html

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Reader Comments

The opinions expressed by readers are not necessarily those of the management.

Jeremy · 8/7/2008 8:31 am

Well said, Thomas! I got into a twitter tit-for-tat with a #dontgo tweeter yesterday. You see, for Republicans, politics is just business, so entrepreneurialism is to be encouraged.

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